Portable document format (PDF)

From Paperless Office

Portable document format is a standard created by Adobe for cross platform document display. PDFs can display text and images and offer several different layers within the same document. For example, a scanned document can have one layer that shows an image of what was scanned with another invisible layer that contains information from an optical character recognition (OCR) process to make the image data searchable.

PDFs can also contain fonts so a text based document can be displayed with exactly the layout specified in the original.

PDF is an open standard so various pieces of software can read and write PDFs. Adobe makes Adobe Acrobat which is generally considered one of the most feature full applications for authoring PDF files.

[edit] Security

PDFs can contain digital signatures or be encrypted. Further there are ways to restrict the usage of files or incorporate digital rights management so a file may only be viewed by a particular person. It is also possible to restrict a document so it cannot be printed or so only portions can be printed.

[edit] Workflow

PDFs offer some workflow capabilities. For example, it is possible to create PDF form, distribute it and have people fill it out, save it and send it back. It is also possible to have a PDF form with a submit button so once it is completed, it can be submitted directly to a database over the internet with the click of a button. PDFs also offer approval and annotation capabilities for collaborative work one a shared document.